Insight Editions · No. 164
The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi
William C. Chittick
William C. Chittick presents Rumi’s Sufi teachings on divine reality, creation, the human soul, love, spiritual discipline, and the return to God.
A study guide to The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi by William C. Chittick. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
Overview
Chittick (illustrated edition, World Wisdom, 2005; first published Tehran, 1974) into a study guide covering the Introduction and all four chapters, with the Foreword and Preface folded in below. Three miniatures from the illustrated edition are reproduced.
Argument Map
Introduction: Rumi, His Life and His Works
Why another book on Rumi? Because in 1973, after half a century of translation, there was still no clear summary in English of what Rumi actually taught. Chittick sets out to supply one: the main points of Sufi doctrine as Rumi expounds them, and the place of Sufism within Islam.
The Gap This Essay Fills
Rumi was already, next to al-Ghazzali, perhaps the Sufi most studied by Western orientalists. R. A. Nicholson had edited and translated the whole Mathnawi in six volumes with two volumes of commentary (1925-40), and A. J. Arberry had added tales, quatrains, 200 ghazals and the prose Discourses. Yet readers were either overwhelmed by the sheer mass of material or, even with the patience to read it all, unable to form a clear picture because of Rumi's "unsystematic" way of teaching.
He is modest about scope. The essay does not claim to exhaust Rumi, whose Mathnawi has been called "the Quran in the Persian language": like revelation, though on a lower level of inspiration, it holds the essence of all knowledge, and even on the academic level it is a compendium of the Islamic sciences, from jurisprudence to astronomy. Many problems are therefore only alluded to, with references to authentic expositions by Burckhardt, Nasr, Lings and Schuon.
A Short Life
Jalal al-Din was born in Balkh on 30 September 1207, son of Baha' al-Din Walad, a learned man and a Sufi. Fleeing the Mongol advance in 1219, the family wandered for years before settling in Konya, where Baha' al-Din held high office as "king of the religious scholars" (sultan al-'ulama'). Rumi succeeded him in 1231 but needed ten more years of study to be recognized as his true successor. Like his father he was drawn early to Sufism and studied with several masters.
For the rest of his life Rumi radiated the intoxication of Divine Love, composed extempore and voluminously, and trained the disciples from whom the Mevlevi order descends. He died on 16 December 1273.
The Three Works
| Work | Size | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Mathnawi | 25,700 couplets | Didactic: rambling stories with digressions explaining their spiritual relevance; apparently disordered, but linked by subtle transitions |
| Diwan-i Shams-i Tabriz | c. 40,000 couplets | Ecstatic: ghazals mostly composed spontaneously during the sama', the dance later known as the "whirling dervishes" |
| Fihi ma fihi ("In it is what is in it") | prose | Sermons and conversations recorded by disciples; Arberry's Discourses of Rumi |
Orientalists have called him "the most eminent Sufi poet whom Persia has produced," "the greatest mystical poet of Islam," and even, in Nicholson's twice-repeated verdict, "the greatest mystical poet of any age": "Where else shall we find such a panorama of universal existence unrolling itself through Time into Eternity?" In Persia he is still the greatest Sufi poet, and new commentaries on the Mathnawi kept appearing into the 1970s (Furuzanfar, Huma'i, Ja'fari's projected 18 volumes, a Persian version of Anqarawi's Turkish commentary).
- 25,700 couplets in the Mathnawi; 40,000 in the Diwan
- 6 volumes of Nicholson's translation plus 2 of commentary
- 700th anniversary of Rumi's death: the occasion of the essay's first publication (Tehran, 1974)
Chapter I: Sufism and Islam
Is Sufism a foreign graft on Islam, a borrowed mysticism, or Islam's own heart? Chittick's answer is unambiguous: Sufism is "the most universal manifestation of the inner dimension of Islam", derived of necessity from the revelation itself, and inseparable from the Law it seeks to penetrate.
What Sufism Is
Sufism is the way by which man transcends his individual self and reaches God. Within the forms of the Islamic revelation it provides the means for an intense spiritual life aimed at transforming man's being and acquiring the spiritual virtues, and it ends in the vision of God. Hence many Sufis define it by the Prophet's saying on ihsan (spiritual virtue): "It is that thou shouldst worship God as if thou sawest Him, for if thou seest Him not, verily He seeth thee."
| Faculty | Role on the Path |
|---|---|
| Intelligence | Saving through its content, the Shahadah: La ilaha illa'Llah, "There is no god but God". Through it man knows the Absolute and the way to salvation |
| Will | Man must choose to conform to the Will of the Absolute |
| Speech | Prayer, and in Sufism its quintessence, invocation (dhikr), which leads intelligence and will back to their essence |
Realized Knowledge, or Gnosis
Through Sufi method the Shahadah is realized within the being of the knower. This is not knowledge in the everyday sense but, in Guenon's phrase, "to know what is, and to know it in such a fashion as to be oneself, truly and effectively, what one knows." If the ego were a closed system this would be impossible. But for Sufism, as for other traditional metaphysics, the ego is only a transient mode of man's transcendent self. Spiritual realization is the removal of the veils separating man from God and from his own full nature.
The best name for this is gnosis ('irfan), "wisdom made up of knowledge and sanctity". Its instrument is the heart, the centre of man's being and the seat of the Intellect, so gnosis is existential rather than merely mental.
Esoteric and Exoteric
Sufism concerns the inward aspect of what the Shari'ah, the religious law, expresses outwardly; hence the label "Islamic esotericism". The Law directs action according to the Divine Will; Sufism seeks direct knowledge of God and the "making real" of the spiritual realities that lie both in the revealed forms and in the soul of the traveller (salik).
| Exoteric (Shari'ah) | Esoteric (Sufism) | |
|---|---|---|
| Addressed to | A particular humanity and psychological condition, universalized over time and space | Particular types too, but open inwardly to the Infinite |
| Forms | Sacred forms are the means and the limit | The same forms are the point of departure to the unlimited |
| Goal | Salvation of the individual | Transcending all individual limits |
That is why the Sufis are among the Shari'ah's firmest supporters. To reach the spirit of a sacred form one must first have the form; and most believers cannot reach the inner meaning, so they are saved by conforming to the outward revelation. Sufis may "oppose" the Law only in the sense of warning those who follow it blindly not to be held back by it. Deviations from Sufism have appeared whenever the Law was ignored.
Is Sufism Borrowed?
Orientalists derive Sufism from non-Islamic sources. There has been borrowing of modes of expression and much development, but to conclude that Sufism grew from a hodgepodge of foreign doctrine is to misunderstand it completely. In essence it is a metaphysics and a means of realization derived from the Islamic revelation itself.
- The Prophet as model. No one in Islam was closer to God; by his prophecy he is the Universal Man and the founder of all that later crystallized in the orders.
- The master and the chain. The Path requires a master chosen by Heaven. The Prophet initiated Companions by transmitting the "Muhammadan grace" (al-barakat al-Muhammadiyyah); without a silsilah reaching back to him no order can exist. Rumi: "He was the first to risk his life, driving his horse and pioneering the road" (Discourses, p. 232).
- Later formulation is not later invention. At first the intensity of spiritual life did not permit an outward separation of Law and Path; both existed from the beginning. Only as the collectivity grew forgetful did the Tariqah crystallize (3rd/9th century), at the same time as the Shari'ah.
- Borrowed words, not borrowed states. Inner states cannot be acquired by external borrowing. A Sufi who found Neoplatonic language described his realized states would hardly discard it because of its source. 'Ali: "Look at what is said, not at who has said it."
Doctrine as a Map
In Sufism doctrine has no right to exist "for its own sake". It is a symbolic prefiguration of knowledge to be reached by spiritual travail, concerned ultimately with the vision of a Truth beyond forms, and so it cannot be rigidly systematized. Two Sufis, or one Sufi on two pages, may contradict each other outwardly; these are different views of one reality, never an essential contradiction. Once the goal is reached, doctrine is discarded: the Sufi is the doctrine. "After direct vision the intermediary is an inconvenience" (IV, 2977). The master speaks the disciple's language as a father babbles to a newborn (II, 3312 ff.).
Chapter II: God and the World, "The Infinitude of the All-Possible"
How can God be utterly beyond the world and yet be its only reality? Chittick unfolds the Shahadah into a complete metaphysics: transcendence and immanence, the Hidden Treasure, the descending levels of reality, creation renewed at every instant, and why a world that is infinite in possibility must contain evil.
Two Readings of One Witness
The Shahadah holds two complementary perspectives: transcendence or incomparability (tanzih), that nothing compares to God, and immanence or resemblance (tashbih), that all beings draw their whole reality from Him. Substitute the Name al-Haqq, "the Truth" and "the Real", and the formula reads "There is no real but the Real." To grant anything autonomous reality would be shirk, "association". Yet whatever reality creatures do have belongs to God; from a certain point of view (i'tibar) the world is real, but never autonomously.
The deeper error is treating Sufi doctrine as a philosophical system to analyse logically, divorced from its operative, lived purpose. Only that could lead one orientalist to call Ibn 'Arabi's doctrine "religiously flat, sterile, and stultifying". Ibn 'Arabi's answer: the world is "imagination" (khayal), as inseparable from the Absolute as a shadow from its person, so "know thy own essence ... in what respect thou art the Absolute, in what respect the world"; knowers are ranked by this knowledge. Rumi: "To know the science of 'I am God' is the science of bodies; to become 'I am God' is the science of religions."
The Hidden Treasure
Creation is the manifestation of God's attributes, in the words of the famous hadith qudsi (a saying in which God speaks through the Prophet): "I was a hidden treasure and I wanted to be known, so I created the world." In the Diwan David asks why God, needing nothing, created two worlds; God answers, "I was a hidden treasure; I sought that that treasure of lovingkindness and bounty should be revealed."
God knew Himself "before" creation, in a logical, not temporal, sense ("With God is neither morn nor eve," VI, p. 408). What He willed was to be known by "others", in the distinctive mode of contingent knowledge, so that, as Ibn 'Arabi puts it, eternal and contingent knowledge together perfect the dimension of Knowledge.
The Levels of Reality
In the school of Ibn 'Arabi the "Hidden Treasure" becomes progressively determined. Each level is untouched by those below it, yet contains and absolutely determines their principles. The archetypes are never brought into existence as separate substances; they are possibilities of determination inherent in the Divine.
- In al-ahadiyyah all possibilities are present at once.
- In al-wahidiyyah they become distinct.
- In al-jabarut each has many reflections, each containing every other.
- In the lowest worlds the condition of form spells this richness out in separate crystallizations, which must appear successively, in time, since form forbids simultaneity.
Result: continuous creation. "Every moment the world is renewed, and we are unaware of its being renewed whilst it remains (the same in appearance). Life is ever arising anew, like the stream" (I, 1142 ff.). "All is perishing but His face" (XXVIII, 88): everything "other than God" (ma siwa'Llah) exists only to perish at once.
God Cannot Not Create
Yet the world must exist on its own level. Ibn 'Arabi: you are to God as your body is to you, and He is to you as the spirit governing your body; a corpse is called "man" only figuratively, but the Absolute can never depart from the forms of the world, so "divinity" belongs to the world truly. Strip the Essence of its relations (the Names) and it would not be a "God" (ilah); we actualize those relations. The name "God" implies reciprocity: Creator needs created. Creation is the ma'luh, that in respect of which God is God. Rumi: until the branch exists, how is the other called "root"? "When you speak of Master, there must be one mastered" (Discourses, p. 153).
Why Evil Exists
| Part 1: necessity | Part 2: mercy |
|---|---|
| Becoming "other than God", manifestation must divide into opposites. "Were there no good and evil and pebbles and pearls ... Then by what name and title would the King call His servants?" | "The cruelty of Time ... and every affliction ... are lighter than farness from God." Afflictions pass; forgetfulness does not. So "deem bitter tribulation to be a (Divine) mercy": it turns man toward God. |
From God's point of view all creation performs one task, revealing the Hidden Treasure. "(Both) infidelity and faith are bearing witness (to Him)" (II, 2534); Shabistari: "Infidelity is ever giving praise to the Truth." This does not license infidelity. Man alone rides "the steed of 'We have honored the sons of Adam'; the reins of free-will are in the hand of his intelligence" (III, 3300). Disobeying reveals certain divine aspects but wrongs oneself: "God most High wills both good and evil, but only approves the good" (Discourses, p. 186).
Chapter III: The Nature of Man
If God created the world to be known, who does the knowing? Chittick's answer is Universal Man, the prototype of both man and cosmos. The chapter then explains the Fall as a loss of vision, and the Trust as the one task man was created to perform.
1. Universal Man
Seen from the Divine Essence the universe is one; seen from relativity it polarizes into macrocosm and microcosm. The macrocosm is the universe in its indefinite multiplicity, showing the Divine Names in detail (mufassal); the microcosm is man, showing the same qualities in summary (mujmal). They are like two mirrors facing each other. So man's total self-knowledge includes knowledge of the universe, which is why "He taught Adam the Names" (II, 31). Rumi: "With us, the name of every thing is its outward (appearance); with the Creator, the name of every thing is its inward (reality)" (I, 1234-46).
- Metaphysical: the sum of all levels of reality in permanent synthesis, every Divine Quality integrated, "neither confused nor separated", yet transcending every determined mode.
- Prophetic: the Spirit, of which the prophets are aspects and Muhammad the perfect synthesis.
- Spiritual: the perfect human model in whom the Names latent in man (bi'l-quwwah) become actual states (bi'l-fi'l); the ego is his outer shell and his inward reality is that of the whole universe.
Individual man is the most complete reflection of Universal Man in the manifested world, which is why he appears last in creation: "The first in thought is the last in actualization" (awwal al-fikr akhir al-'amal). The term was made prominent by Ibn 'Arabi, but the reality was known from the start: "The first thing created by God was my light" (or "my spirit"), said the Prophet.
| Earlier Sufis and Rumi | Ibn 'Arabi's usage | |
|---|---|---|
| Microcosm | Man's external form | Man |
| Macrocosm | Man's inward reality (= Universal Man) | The outward universe |
Rumi: philosophers call man the microcosm, Sufis the macrocosm, "because philosophy is confined to the phenomenal form of man, whereas theosophy is connected with the essential truth of his true nature" (IV, p. 301). Jami saw both views as one and quoted 'Ali: "Thou takest thyself to be a small body, but within thee unfolds the macrocosm."
Shabistari's Gulshan-i Raz makes the cosmic position explicit: "That which was made last was first in thought ... There is no other final cause beyond man ... You are the kernel of the world in the midst thereof, / Know yourself that you are the world's soul." Rumi: "What is in the jar that is not (also) in the river? ... This world is the jar and the heart is like the river" (IV, 809-13).
2. The Fall
Man's state as an individual cut off from his prototype results from Adam's fall, which Rumi traces to the casting out of Iblis. Commanded to bow to Adam, Iblis refused: "I am better than he; Thou createdst me of fire, and him ... of clay" (VII, 11-12).
| Figure | Macrocosm | Microcosm |
|---|---|---|
| Iblis | Tendency to dispersion, away from the Centre | The nafs, carnal self |
| Angels | Spiritual order | Innermost faculties: love of God, gnosis |
| Adam | Universal Man | Man's full nature |
"The fleshly soul and the Devil both have (ever) been one person" (III, 4053 ff.).
Adam fell when he too looked only at the outward form and saw the world as independent of God: the blinding of the "eye of the heart" (chashm-i dil, 'ayn al-qalb). "When Adam's greed for the wheat waxed great, it robbed Adam's heart of health" (II, 2737 ff.). Following Schuon, the world of Eden was not yet materialized: all beings were "contemplative states" within Adam. Through the sin of inquisitiveness he wished to see things in and for themselves; the direct link broke and the world became external to him. Oppositions hardened: "Get ye all down, each of you an enemy to each" (VII, 24), as if people's conflicting thoughts were suddenly materialized and tore each other apart.
| If all men realized Universal Man | If all men were fallen |
|---|---|
| The world would be reintegrated into the Principle and vanish; Eden restored | The world would disintegrate into chaos |
Both are needed for the Divine possibilities to become manifest. Rumi will not reveal certain mysteries "lest the veil of forgetfulness should be entirely rent and (the meat in) the pot of tribulation be left half-raw" (VI, 3527-28).
3. The Trust
Universal Man knows things as they are in God; God knows the differentiated world through Universal Man. In him the purpose of creation is fulfilled and multiplicity returns to unity. "The owner of the Heart becomes a six-faced mirror: through him God looks upon (all) the six directions ... Without him God does not bestow bounty on any one" (V, 874 ff.). Ibn 'Arabi: he is to God "as the pupil of the eye to the eye".
When a man realizes this primordial state he becomes a channel of grace for the world. Through the Fall most have forgotten the function, so the world grows ever more separated and chaotic. The Quran calls the function the Trust (al-amanah): "We offered the trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to carry it ... and man carried it. Surely he is sinful, very foolish" (XXXIII, 72).
Chapter IV: Operative Sufism
Doctrine is a map; this chapter is the journey. Chittick follows Rumi through four stations: union with God through annihilation and subsistence, the nafs that veils it, the knowledge and method that remove the veil, and the limits of rational knowledge that the traveller must leave behind.
1. Union with God
The realization of the primordial state of Universal Man, seen from the operative ('amali) side of the Path, is "union with God" (al-wisal bi'l-Haqq). Of the many descriptions of the way, Chittick takes two steps, each an application of the Shahadah to spiritual travail.
| Step | Root in the formula | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Fana', annihilation | The "no": there is no god... | Man's self-existence is not real; the illusion must be annihilated |
| Baqa', subsistence | The "but": ...but God | Since God alone is real, man's real Self is God; he subsists in Him |
Rumi: "Because he is in 'but', he has transcended 'no'; whoever is in 'but' has not passed away" (I, 3052-54). "When a man's 'I' is negated ... After 'no', what else remains?" (VI, 2096-97).
"Die before ye die" is the Prophetic saying Rumi returns to: "choose death and tear off the veil ... Not such a death that you will go into the grave, (but) a death consisting of (spiritual) transformation" (VI, 738-39). "Except dying, no other skill avails with God" (VI, 3838). Nearness is not up or down: "to be nigh unto God is to escape from the prison of existence" (III, 4514). Even friendship, passion, love, unbelief and faith are "walls and a cause of narrowness and duality" (Discourses, p. 203); in Love's endless garden "there are many fruits besides sorrow and joy" (I, 1791-94).
The most one can do to define union is strip away every limitation, since limits have only "negative reality". Hence the famous ghazal (probably spurious, Chittick notes, but true to Rumi): "I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor Moslem. / I am not of the East, nor of the West ... My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless ... I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one."
2. The Nafs
The ego or carnal self (nafs) is a veil hiding man's true nature. "We have been in heaven, we have been friends of the angels; / Thither, sire, let us return, for that is our country." "Man's original food is the Light of God: animal food is improper for him" (III, 1083-84). "Behold how the earthly frame has entrapped thee! / Rend the sack and raise thy head clear."
| Stage | Meaning |
|---|---|
| nafs-i ammarah | The soul that incites to evil (the subject here) |
| nafs-i lawwamah | The soul that reproaches itself |
| nafs-i mutma'innah | The soul at peace with God |
- Before the Fall man reflected God integrally and was in equilibrium with all Existence.
- After it, he built an artificial equilibrium with the ego as measure; "man is the measure of all things" only when he sees through God.
- Death, voluntary or physical, restores awareness of the true equilibrium: "Man is asleep and when he dies he awakens."
- If his being does not conform, that order appears to him as chaos: this is hell. "This carnal self is Hell" (I, 1375). The fleshly soul may survive the body: "the brigand was left alive" (V, 3822-23).
3. Knowledge and Method
The heart, man's centre, is identified in its depths with his archetypes and links him directly to the Spirit. Rumi often cites the hadith qudsi: "Neither My earth nor My heavens contain Me, but I am contained in the heart of My faithful servant." "I gazed into my own heart; / There I saw Him; He was nowhere else." To know the heart in its essence is to know God, and to know God one must cease to exist in the mode that separates: "borrow eye and sight from Him, then look on His face with His eye" (IV, 75-77). Shabistari: "Knower and Known are one and the same."
Each level of reality symbolizes those above it. For the traveller a higher state appears first as a vision within him, and he is gradually absorbed into it. Knowledge says: "It is impossible for me to be contained here, and it is difficult for you to come there ... though it is difficult, strive" (Discourses, p. 216).
Spiritual virtue is the outward reflection of this transformation: a man whose whole being, body included, has become a mirror reflecting God. It is not merit; it is the natural pre-Fall state uncovered once what is opaque is removed.
4. The Limits of Rational Knowledge
External knowledge is justified only insofar as it is symbolically effective. Man should not be content to "know" with the feeble powers of reason. "When did the steed of opinion run to the Heavens? ... your imagination and reflection and sense-perception ... are like the reed-cane on which children ride." The sciences of mystics carry them; those of sensual men are burdens, "like an ass laden with his books" (I, 3442 ff.).
| Partial intellect (reason) | Intellect of intellect |
|---|---|
| The husk; the philosopher "in bondage to things perceived by the intellect" | The kernel; the saint "rides as a prince" on it |
| Offers a hundred evidences | Takes no step without certainty |
| "Smoke is evidence of fire"; proof is a blind man's staff | "Seeing fire plainly" (VI, 2505 ff.) |
(III, 2527-30). The cow that wanders across Baghdad sees nothing but "the rind of a watermelon" (IV, 2378).
The great scholars "know perfectly ... those matters which do not concern them," but not their own selves (Discourses, p. 30). "Make a journey out of self into [your real] self, O master, / For by such a journey earth becomes a quarry of gold." Once illumination dawns, "conclusion and premise" fall away: the seer is "independent of the (logical) proof which resembles a (blind man's) staff" (I, 1507-8). Nor does it help to pursue a science "for the glory of God": set the whole world on your heart in His service and it equals "bowing your head once to the ground" (Discourses, p. 212).
Synthesis
Key Takeaways
- Sufism is Islam's inner dimension, rooted in the Prophet and transmitted by an unbroken chain, not a borrowed mysticism.
- Gnosis is knowledge that becomes being; for Rumi it is identical with love.
- Law, Path, Truth: the candle, the walking, the arrival; never drop the guide before the goal.
- Doctrine is a map to be discarded on arrival, so outward contradictions between Sufis do not matter.
- Transcendence and immanence together: "no real but the Real". Sufism is not pantheism.
- God created to be known: the Hidden Treasure.
- Reality descends: Essence, Unity, Unicity, archetypes, spiritual, psychic and material worlds.
- Creation is renewed every instant; the world is the phantom, God the Real.
- Evil follows from the Infinite manifesting all possibilities, and affliction is mercy because it turns man to God.
- Free will is the salt of devotion: only man can worship by choice.
- Man and cosmos are facing mirrors; Universal Man is the prototype of both.
- The first in thought is the last in actualization: the tree is born of the fruit.
- Iblis is one-eyed reason; the Fall is the blinding of the eye of the heart.
- Heedlessness holds the world up; contemplatives and the heedless balance it.
- The Trust: man's one task is to be the channel of grace; anything else is using a sword as a butcher's knife.
- Die before you die: "no" annihilates the ego, "but" restores the Self.
- Union is plenitude, not extinction; "I am God" is humility.
- The ego is the mother of idols and, finally, hell itself.
- Dhikr reverses dispersion; music and dance help only through grace.
- Orthodoxy keeps the symbol clear: "Alter yourself, not the Traditions."
- Reason is a blind man's staff: know the definition of yourself, then flee it.
- The gift God wants is a mirror-bright heart: not-being.
Frameworks at a Glance
| Framework | Chapter | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| Intelligence, will, speech | I | See why Islam is a "way of knowledge" |
| Shari'ah / Tariqah / Haqiqah | I | Place practice, discipline and realization |
| Tanzih + tashbih | II | Hold transcendence and immanence together |
| Five levels of reality | II | Read creation as descent and continuous renewal |
| Microcosm / macrocosm | III | Read the outer world as inner, and vice versa |
| Fana' / baqa' | IV | Map the Shahadah onto spiritual work |
| Three nafs | IV | Gauge the soul's transformation |
| Husk / kernel intellect | IV | Separate argument from certainty |
A closer look
| Strengths | Limits |
|---|---|
| Short, clear, faithful to Rumi's operative intent; dense with primary quotations | Reads Rumi through Ibn 'Arabi, which Chittick himself later called "not completely fair" |
| Corrects the "pantheism" and "foreign origin" errors | Dismissive of orientalist and psychological scholarship; argues from traditionalist premises |
| Situates Sufism within the Law | Old Nicholson/Arberry translations; little on Rumi's history, poetics or Shams |
Glossary of Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| al-ahadiyyah | Indivisible Unity, the first determination of the Essence |
| al-amanah | The Trust (Quran XXXIII, 72) borne by man |
| a'yan thabitah | Immutable archetypes, possibilities in the Divine Knowledge |
| baqa' | Subsistence in God after annihilation |
| al-dhat | The Divine Essence, beyond description |
| dhikr | Remembrance and invocation of God's Name |
| fana' | Annihilation of the illusory self |
| ghaflah | Forgetfulness, heedlessness of God |
| al-Haqq | The Real, the Truth: a Name of God |
| Haqiqah | The Truth, goal of the Path |
| Iblis | Satan; the tendency to dispersion; in man, the nafs |
| ihsan | Spiritual virtue: worship as if you saw God |
| al-insan al-kamil | Universal or Perfect Man |
| 'irfan | Gnosis: knowledge plus sanctity |
| 'ishq, mahabbah | Love; for Rumi, one with gnosis |
| jabarut, malakut, nasut | Spiritual, psychic and material worlds |
| Mevlevi | Sufi order descending from Rumi; the whirling dervishes |
| mutabarrikun / salikun | The "blessed" members of an order / true travellers |
| nafs | Ego, carnal soul (ammarah, lawwamah, mutma'innah) |
| sama' | Spiritual music and dance |
| Shahadah | "There is no god but God" |
| Shari'ah | The revealed religious Law |
| shirk | Association of anything with God |
| silsilah | Initiatic chain back to the Prophet |
| tajalli | Theophany, divine self-manifestation |
| tanzih / tashbih | Transcendence / immanence |
| Tariqah | The spiritual Path |
| al-wahidiyyah | Unicity: the Names distinct |
About this book
The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi by William C. Chittick, 1974. This is a chapter-by-chapter study of the book, with summaries, maps, tables and diagrams; short quotations keep their page references. It is shared free for personal study, is not for sale, and is not endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.
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